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I'm against the 1.5 br rule mostly because it allows positional reinforcements to stay in its current form and I'd much rather have it reworked along the lines of what Slamz proposed (my take on it here). I wouldn't care much about a 1.5 br limit - which could still work - with this way of doing reinforcements. Btw acadian I play mostly solo and I'm more often ganked than ganking.

Pulling players in the tag circle that aren't directly targeted is required for large fleets to engage each others. If you're only able to tag a single ship and everyone else can choose not to join, the smaller fleet could easily escape. I agree it shouldn't automatically pull anyone when the target is a bot.
If you are pissed off because you chose to enter a battle that was far away and you need to wait before you get to it, I'd say I'm probably more pissed off when I'm getting unjustifiably ganked because the game mechanics helped it.
nice.

The initial attacker and defender shouldn't be outside of guns range when the tag is initiated, this allows the target to escape the instance without ever being at risk, aka defensive tag. This is irrelevant to the distance other ships would spawn at. Say you have a group of a couple of ships of the line and a speed fit trinco attacking a lone ship; the trinco starts chasing the target thus distancing itself from the slower ships of the line in its fleet. It then has to get within guns range before the lone defender can start the countdown to spawn the instance (otherwise it would do so outside of guns range and would be allowed to leave the battle right away because the trinco chasers wouldn't hit it). Once the battle starts, both the tagging trinco and the defender are in the instance and the remaining ships of the line are given a few seconds (maybe up to couple minutes) to choose to join the battle before it starts, but this does not change the position they spawn in the instance - their position was saved the moment the instance was created. If they chose to join, they are spawned way further back where they should be, giving the ganked lone ship a chance to duel the tagging trinco on its own for a while and maybe escape the gank.

The recent modifications to the instance spawning mechanics has created many discussions on the topic and in this thread Niels Terkildsen had a new take on it that deserves more attention. Also, the removal of the 1.5 BR limit, which was created in part to alleviate problems the new positional reinforcements, has pretty much broken the game. This is why, in my opinion, this new system needs to be implemented asap. Here's my attempt to explain it in as few words as possible:
Remove reinforcements and the 2 minutes timer - instead, have all ships in ~2 minutes sailing distance join instantly at the position they are at the time the tag is initiated. Joining is optional for ships outside the tag circle.
- A fast tackler can no longer magically teleport his slower buddies closer to their victims (or even encircle) - All ships keep their relative open world positions
- No need to wait for reinforcements at the start of a battle to decide to fight or flee
- It accomplish the same thing as a "growing reinforcements circle" that some are debating for, but is more convenient and straightforward in my opinion - Sailing the open world becomes a game of its own with much more depth, rather than a crude battle generator
Another problem is the transition back to open world after a battle. An idea that seems to have many proponents is to automatically kick players out of the battle results screen after x minutes. I argue that this is not viable as all ships in battle would become potential gank victims as they are then guaranteed to appear back in open world in a known location and in known numbers once the battle is over. I suggest to teleport all players to their nearest friendly or neutral port after a battle. It is not so far fetched when you account for time compression and also fixes the other way to gank players the post battle allows, the other way around, with the gankers inside the instance waiting for their victims outside. Both of these exploits give no chance to the victims to do anything about it.
These changes would make it acceptable, in my opinion, to disallow defensive tagging by making the maximum tag distance slightly shorter than guns range.
I am aware that this would not be welcomed by some players victim of pvp in their home waters as they would find themselves unable to call their nation for help and I do not wish to dismiss that. Maybe missions should not require players to sail in the open world so it wouldn't make them so vulnerable in the first place. Another solution would be to add pvp missions that rewards players for patrolling and reporting enemy players, then more ships would be available to deal with them instead of all being busy in a pve battle.

They were aware of this so I see it as a them saying "oh you don't like this? here, have some of this, how do you like it now?"
Either that or they deliberately broke the game so that the next update won't be criticized so harshly.
or both.

Just to be clear, your instance spawn location should be determined when the tag timer ends. You are then presented with a join/ignore dialog window for 20 seconds, but still spawn where you were when the tag timer ended, not where you got when clicking join (obvious exploit). Can't join if you're outside the big circle when the tag happens, but the outer circle could extend all the way to the horizon. That yes/no window should probably include things like tag initiator and tag target name to prevent abuse.
And about the battle results screen, you can both use it to hide inside and gank people outside or wait outside and gank them as they come out. A 2 minutes or more invulnerability would help but could still be worked around with a bit of coordination. Kicking people off the battle results screen after x minutes would mean you would pretty much always be ganked after a battle in enemy territory. This is why I think the only viable solution is to force you back to the nearest friendly/neutral port after a battle. Maybe it would still be abused but it wouldn't be nearly as harmful, especially if you can't defensive tag outside of guns range. If the average battle lasts 30 minutes or more, that should be more than enough compressed OW time to be back in dock. As a bonus, it explains how you got all your crew back!

I totally love Niels Terkildsen's idea. It could still work with a 1.5 br rule, if that's absolutely necessary, but I think this system would fix most of what the 1.5 br rule is trying to fix - and more.
While we're at it make the inner circle smaller to disallow defensive tags. If this system is implemented - with a 0 second reinforcement timer - I would be ok with not being able to use defensive tags because I would either still have a chance to flee inside the instance or would have been outplayed in the OW and would thus accept the gank. Also, getting defensive tagged out of a fair fight is so frustrating.
A simple and effective transition from ow to instances that make sense. PLEASE, DO IT.

I like it as it is now, the issue wasn't only with SOLs.
If availability really is a problem, I say adjust player production rates instead. But my guess is it will resolve itself once the initial demand is met.

It would be nice to be able to send to chat, like we currently can for modules, a ship, so that other players can get all the details in a tooltip. The tooltip you get of your own ships in the Home screen made available to other players by right clicking a ship in the Ship Selection window, in the Home screen, and selecting the suggested function "Send to Chat", just like we can for items in the Equipment screen. This would facilitate trading and possibly even bragging.

I'd rather see the devs work on anything else rather than AI. The first 2 points (chase, demast and board) could be good things to have down the line, however the last 2 points seem rather complex to program and might not even be noticeable to new players learning the basics, which is what PVE should be for.
As for everything else I think this update was a big step in the right direction. I agree with previous posts, some tweaks are needed. I vote to keep AI ships not capturable and instead adjust player production rates if needed.

imo the problem here is changing flags when entering battle. There wouldn't be an issue if a pirate couldn't change flag and it wouldn't give anyone negative xp to shoot him.
I dislike having to pick a side with the limited info on the OW and be stuck with it for the duration of the battle.

I agree it shouldn't be possible to camp outside a battle but we need to keep the swords icon so we know ships can pop back in OW from that location. Maybe an optional teleport to nearest port on the battle result screen.